What plumeria is and where it comes from
Plumeria is a small tropical tree in the dogbane family, grown for clusters of thick, waxy, strongly scented flowers held at the tips of stubby branches. Species counts disagree: at least 12 accepted species against about 18. The native range runs through the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America, Venezuela, and Colombia, and the deciduous garden species, Plumeria rubra, comes from dry, hot country in Mexico, Central America and Venezuela. Hawaii is the association almost every American brings to the plant, and it is a borrowed one. The genus is endemic to the Caribbean Basin, grows in Hawaii only as an ornamental with no wild populations there, and reached the Pacific islands in the late 19th century for lei making. Spanish ships had carried it to the Philippines far earlier, in the 1560s, and it has naturalized since in places as distant as China and the Himalayas.
Two species account for most of what is sold, and they part ways in winter. Plumeria rubra types are deciduous, while Plumeria obtusa and the other white-flowered species stay evergreen. Obtusa is the one sold as Singapore plumeria, semi-deciduous in practice, holding leaves and even flowers straight through the cold months, and its hybrids keep their foliage year-round. Both are the principal plumerias grown in Hawaii, rubra there under the name temple tree, and both trace back to the West Indies. Breeding on that base has produced more than 100 named cultivars and hybrids, which is why the label on the pot decides more about a plumeria than the pot size does. The genus name honors Charles Plumier, a French Franciscan monk and botanist who lived from 1646 to 1704, while frangipani, the other name in common use, came from a 16th century Italian nobleman whose perfume smelled like the flower. In Hawaii the flower is melia.
The flower is a narrow tube that flares into five rounded, waxy petals overlapping like the blades of a pinwheel, the tube itself 2 to 4 inches long. Two figures circulate for width, a pinwheel averaging 2 to 3 inches across and blooms reaching 4 inches wide. Color runs from pure white through yellow, orange, pink and red, and combinations of those. Scent peaks at night, and it does not resolve to one thing, since the perceived notes take in jasmine, citrus and gardenia alongside fruity coconut, peach and vanilla. For all that fragrance, the flowers hold no nectar at all; the scent works as a lure, and sphinx moths pollinate the tree while carrying pollen from flower to flower on a search that never pays.
When plumeria blooms and how long a flower lasts
Plumeria blooms through the warm half of the year. In Florida the window runs May through November, and Hawaii's is given two ways, May to November and March to October. Flowering tracks the leaves. The plant spends winter dormant and leafless, and it turns into a prolific bloomer only once the new foliage reestablishes, so a pot that came out of storage bare is weeks behind a tree that never lost a leaf. Clusters form at the branch tips on the season's own growth, and the sequence never varies: leaves, then buds, then a long run of flowers. In a container climate the season is shorter at both ends, because spring goes into rebuilding a canopy that was lost indoors and the first cold nights close the show.
A cluster works far longer than any single flower on it does. One inflorescence may keep producing bloom for five months, though the last flowers it pushes come small and infrequent. A plant can look heavily in flower in June and thinly in flower in October with nothing having gone wrong. Cluster size is a cultivar trait and the spread is wide, with some hybrids carrying more than 200 flowers per cluster and others only 50 to 60. The number of clusters follows the same pattern: the most floriferous cultivars set flowers on up to 60 percent of their branch tips, while sparser ones flower on 10 percent. Two plants of the same age and size can therefore look nothing alike in July, a cultivar difference that no amount of feeding will close.
Why a healthy plumeria will not bloom
Most plumerias that make leaves and no flowers are short of sun, short of years, or both. Full sun is not negotiable for flowering, and a container on a shaded patio or against a north wall will push leaves all season and set nothing at the tips. Age is the other half of the answer, and it is the part sellers rarely spell out. A plant started from a cutting can flower within its first year, though whether it does depends on how large the original cutting was and what time of year it was taken. A plant grown from seed takes three years or more before it flowers at all, so a cheap unnamed seedling can look healthy and stay blank through several summers while its owner works down every other explanation. The two causes compound indoors: a young plant in weak light spends what growth it has on foliage, and the wood never reaches flowering size.
Fertilizer is the next place to look, and the ratio matters more than the brand. The feeding rate for plumeria is 10-30-10, applied every three to four months at roughly a pound for every inch of trunk diameter, a low-nitrogen, high-phosphorus formula. High-nitrogen feed, the kind that keeps a lawn green, pushes leaf and stem at the expense of flower clusters, and a plant sitting where lawn fertilizer runs off will show exactly that. Timing matters at the other end of the season. Feeding should stop 30 to 45 days before the first cool weather is expected, because fertilizer pushes soft new growth that cold damages. A plant fed late goes into winter with tender tips, loses them, and spends the following spring rebuilding wood that should have been carrying flowers.
Overwatering finishes the list, and in a pot it is the easiest mistake to make. Plumeria is drought tolerant once established, and the thick stems hold their own water, so a mix that stays damp drowns the roots and the plant answers by yellowing and shedding leaves in the middle of summer, which owners often read as dormancy arriving early. Timing is the other quiet cause. A newly rooted plant wants at least three months of root growth before it goes into dormancy, so a cutting potted in late summer spends its first winter with a root system too small to support a bloom the following year. None of this is visible above the soil line, which is why the same plant gets repotted, moved, fed and dosed for years while the real limit is roots and age.
A check order for a plant that will not flower
Work down these in order and change one thing at a time. Plumeria answers slowly, so every change needs a full season before the next one goes in.
Overwintering a plumeria, in a pot or in the ground
A plumeria that drops every leaf in late fall is doing what it is supposed to do. Leaf fall begins when winter temperatures drop below 50 degrees Fahrenheit, and flowering stops with it; the rest that follows lasts anywhere from one to five months depending on conditions. What is left looks alarming, a set of gray, wrinkling sticks with nothing living at the tips. The stems are still working. They stay green under the surface and carry on photosynthesis with no leaves present, which is how a bare plumeria sits in a dark garage for months without water and leafs out again in spring. Watering that plant, feeding it, or moving it into warmth to help it along is the reliable way to rot the roots or start growth the plant cannot support.
The temperature at which a plumeria has to come in is the most disputed number in its care, and the figures do not line up. Container plants are put indoors at a reduced 50 to 55 degrees Fahrenheit with slightly reduced watering. Growers who leave plants out longer set the alarm lower: frost protection once the forecast dips to 40 degrees, freeze protection at 35 degrees and below, and a stored dormant plant held above 40 degrees at all times. Below 40 degrees is also given as the point to start watching the forecast for a freeze. The lowest figure comes with a condition attached, since a well established plumeria takes a brief 32 degrees with only cosmetic burn while young plants do not survive the same night. Below 30 degrees, a heat source in the storage space is recommended. Taking the highest of those numbers costs nothing, since a plant moved under cover early only starts its rest a little sooner.
Three methods work, and space decides between them more than climate does. The simplest is to move the pot into a garage, closet or basement and leave it dark, because dormant plumerias need no light at all and a sunny storage spot can break dormancy too early. Water stops entirely. The second method is bare root, for plants too big to carry in their pots: dig the plant, shake off the excess dirt, then hang it up or stand it in a bucket with loosely wadded newspaper packed around the roots. The third is to keep it growing under lights indoors, the way a potted hibiscus is often carried through winter, which trades the rest period for green leaves and a plant that needs watering until spring. Before any of them, most leaves come off, cut so about a half inch of leaf stalk stays on the branch, which keeps the leaf nodes from rotting. Plants in the ground that cannot be moved need frost cloth or blankets kept ready for freezing nights, and plain plastic is the wrong cover unless it sits on a solid frame that holds it clear of the branches.
Winter handling by zone
What winter asks of a plumeria changes with the band you garden in, and the thresholds below do not all agree with each other.
Taking cuttings, rooting them, and pruning
Plumeria is easily propagated from stem cuttings, and almost every named plant in an American garden started as one. Cutting length is not settled: tip cuttings of 1 to 2 feet, against a standard nursery cutting taken from a branch tip at about 8 to 12 inches. The cut bleeds milky latex at once, and that sap carries compounds that irritate eyes and skin, so gloves go on before the knife comes out. Some growers stop the flow by torching the cut surface with a plumber's blowtorch and dipping it in water to cool it. The ordinary method is patience: the cutting cures in a dry place for at least two weeks before it is planted, which lets the wound seal over. A cutting pushed into soil fresh and wet is the one that rots at the base, and the cure is the step most often skipped.
Rooting is a matter of warmth and restraint. Roots form best in soil between 65 and 85 degrees Fahrenheit, and under good conditions a cutting roots in 6 to 8 weeks, while a cool climate can stretch that to many months. Water sparingly through the wait, since a rooting cutting should not be watered too much or too often; nothing has grown yet to take the moisture up, and the base of the stem sits in whatever is left. A rooting compound of 0.3 percent indolebutyric acid on the cut end improves rooting without being a requirement for it. Cuttings that have to wait out a winter divide growers sharply. The blunt position is that plumeria cuttings do not store well and should be rooted soon after they are taken. Those who do store them dry the cutting thoroughly, wrap it loosely in crumpled newspaper and box it somewhere dry, or keep it cool and dark and mist it when it starts to look shriveled. Another answer skips storage and bag-roots any cutting that has to be held through the winter.
Pruning is a winter job with a price attached. It is easiest after leaf drop, when the branch structure is finally visible, but heavy pruning sacrifices the following spring's bloom, because the clusters would have come from the tips being removed. Old trees that have outgrown their place respond well to pollarding, the practice of cutting back repeatedly to the same framework. Grafting is the other way growers change a plant. Scion wood for grafting is cut at 6 to 10 inches and joined to root stock roughly 18 to 24 months old, and a graft that has taken pushes new leaves within 2 weeks. Nurseries hold a grafted plant about 6 to 8 weeks after the graft before shipping it, which is a fair yardstick for how long a fresh graft needs before it can be handled like an ordinary plant.
Named plumerias and the species behind them
Plumeria is bought by name, and the name carries more than color. Scent, flower size and how much stem a plant adds in a season sit on the label, and the species behind the cultivar decides whether it goes bare in winter.
Rust and the other problems plumeria gets
Rust is the disease that defines growing plumeria in a humid climate. It shows as conspicuous, powdery, yellow-orange lesions on the leaves, with the spore masses concentrated on the undersides, where they build through the growing season. Most cultivars are susceptible, and at least eight plumeria species carry it, alba, clusioides, rubra and obtusa among them. The damage moves fast: infected leaves can brown and fall as early as two months after the spring flush is infected, and premature defoliation can approach 100 percent. The fungus does not infect stems or flowers, so a tree stripped bare in August is disfigured and set back while the wood comes through untouched. The disease is recent everywhere it occurs. It was first recorded on Plumeria alba on Guadeloupe in 1902 and spread from there into Central America, reaching Oahu only in 1991 by a route nobody has established.
Management is sanitation first, chemicals second, and cultivar choice underneath both. Fallen leaves get picked up and destroyed, and severely infected leaves come off the tree early in the season; collecting dead leaves and removing them from the site in fall cuts what carries over to the next year. Siting helps, because planting in drier, less humid locations reduces infection and disease development. Two fungicides are registered in Hawaii for the disease, Eagle 40WP at 40 percent myclobutanil and Heritage at 50 percent azoxystrobin. Resistance is real and unevenly spread. In University of Hawaii trials, a Puerto Rico accession of the cultivar 'San Germain' rated highly resistant and 'Kimo' developed only minor leaf symptoms, while 'Rainbow HAES 3-2' and 'Red Moragne' showed heavy spotting, yellowing and defoliation by late July. Nature takes a share too: fungal hyperparasites and a predatory midge reduce the rust without eradicating it.
Insects are a smaller problem with one exception. Plumeria is attacked by the long-horned beetle known as the plumeria stem borer, along with thrips, a blossom midge, greenhouse and spiraling whiteflies, and mites. The borer is the destructive one, because its damage happens inside the stem where insecticides cannot reach it; the sign is a stem gone shriveled and bent, and the answer is to cut it back to its junction with a healthy branch. Sucking insects announce themselves indirectly. Black sooty mold on stems and leaves means scale, whiteflies or mealybugs are somewhere above, feeding and dropping honeydew, so the mold is a symptom to trace upward, and the insects above it are what gets treated.
What plumeria growers actually post about
The order below comes from thirty-nine grower threads on four gardening forums, most of them on a board given over to plumeria, ranked by how often each complaint came up.
Eight threads, the largest single group. The plants are described as healthy, tall and well fed, and the age of the wood is almost never mentioned in the first post.
Seven threads. Every leaf goes, the tips shrivel, and the plant is posted as dead in midwinter by an owner who watered it to help. The same accounts turn up in spring with new leaves.
Seven threads, tied for second. Soft black tips and mushy stems after a cold or wet spell, most often on unrooted cuttings and on plants that came indoors late.
Seven threads. The recurring question is how long to wait before calling a cutting a failure, and the recurring cause is water given before there are roots to take it.
Four threads posted as photographs with no symptom named, which is its own signal: the early stages of rot, mites and overwatering look alike to a new owner.
Three threads. Too much water and too little produce the same yellowing leaf, so the pot has to be lifted and judged by weight; looking at the foliage will not settle it.
Two threads, both from plants held indoors over winter, where dry heat and no predators favor mites on a plant nobody is inspecting.
One thread, which is the surprise of the sample. Rust dominates the search results and barely registers on the forums, though a susceptible variety can lose its leaves within 8 weeks of the yearly flush.
Light
Full sun, all day, is the requirement. Plumeria grows best in full sun and well-drained soil, and in a container the two work as a single condition, because strong light also dries the mix between waterings while a shaded pot stays wet long enough to cost roots. The practical position is the hottest hard surface on the property: a south or west wall, a driveway, a pool deck, a roof terrace. Flower clusters form at the branch tips, so a plant lit from one side flowers on one side, and a pot turned through the season fills out evenly. Anything less than a full day of direct sun shows up as long soft growth between the leaf scars and a canopy carrying leaves and no clusters.
Soil, water, and whether to keep it in a pot
Plumeria wants a mix that drains hard and a watering rhythm that lets it dry out. It grows in a rich, dry to medium moisture, well-drained loam in full sun, which in a container means an open, gritty mix, several drainage holes, and a soak that runs straight through to the saucer. Water deeply once the mix has gone dry down past the surface, then leave it until it dries again. The thick stems carry their own reserve, so a plant that goes a week too long sulks, while a plant that stays damp loses roots quietly and shows nothing above the soil until leaves start yellowing in midsummer. Repotting is the one operation to slow down for, since young root systems are brittle and have to be moved carefully. Lift the plant with its mix intact, set it into the next pot size up, and skip the root-teasing that a nursery shrub gets.
The choice between a pot and open ground is a winter decision before it is a size decision. Planting out is generally held to south Florida and protected parts of central Florida unless real steps are taken against frost, and the same reasoning applies along the rest of the Gulf and southwest. In a pot, the growth class on the label predicts how long the arrangement lasts: a medium habit adds 12 to 24 inches of new stem a year and a tall one more than 24 inches, so a tall cultivar outgrows a liftable pot within a few seasons while a dwarf or compact one stays movable for years. Weight decides the rest. A pot heavy enough to hold a top-heavy plumeria upright in a summer storm is a pot that takes two people or a dolly to move, which is why growers in cold zones buy the small-habit cultivars deliberately and leave the tall ones to gardeners who can plant them out.
Hardiness, and where plumeria stays outside all year
Plumeria lives outdoors year round only at the warm end of the map, and the published range is given two ways: zones 10B to 11, and zones 10 to 12. Anywhere colder it is a container plant that comes under cover, which is most of the country. Florida shows the edge clearly, because most of the interior of the central part of the state sits in zone 9B, where tropical plants face a continual threat of frost. The disagreement between those two ranges sits at that cold edge, and there the outcome depends on the microclimate more than on the map: a masonry wall that holds the day's heat, a canopy overhead that slows radiant cooling, a slope that lets cold air drain away downhill. Gardeners one band colder who keep plumeria in the ground are betting each winter on how long a cold snap lasts and how far it drops.
Height, spread, and the size of the leaves
In the ground a plumeria becomes a small tree, and the recorded mature size varies. Height and spread are both given as 15 to 25 feet, and separately as about 30 feet tall. The shape matters more than the number: the canopy is broad and round-headed, usually about as wide as the tree is tall, so width is what decides whether a spot works. Leaf size splits two ways as well, 2 to 4 inches wide and 8 to 12 inches long, and up to 8 to 16 inches long. Either way the leaves are large, paddle-shaped and clustered at the ends of the branches, so a plumeria reads as bare gray sticks for part of the year and as a full tropical tree for the rest of it.
Sap, toxicity, and pets
Plumeria is an irritant more than a poison. All parts of the plant give off a milky sap when they are damaged, and it may irritate eyes and skin; on Plumeria rubra that sap is known to cause dermatitis. Measured against other landscape plants, oleander among them, plumeria is not considered particularly poisonous, and there are no recorded cases of death from exposure to it or from eating it. One caution stays open because of the family it belongs to: Cornell University's poisonous-plants service notes, without confirming it, that a dogbane relative might carry cardiac glycosides of the kind oleander and foxglove hold, which would cause trouble if eaten. Handling follows from the sap. Wear gloves when cutting, keep hands away from eyes until they are washed, and rinse a child or a dog that has been chewing on a pruned branch. Anyone sorting a whole planting for animals can start from the list of flowers that are safe for cats and dogs.
Seed pods and what grows out of them
Plumeria sets seed only when a flower is pollinated, and what comes up will not repeat the parent. A pollinated flower forms two hard, narrow, pointed pods up to 7 inches long, each holding 20 to 60 winged seeds, while cultivated plants are recorded with cylindrical pods to 8 inches that are rarely formed at all. Color carries loosely: seed from white-flowered parents produces mostly white-flowered seedlings, while flower quality across a batch stays unpredictable. That unpredictability is the whole reason named cultivars travel as cuttings and grafts. Sowing plumeria seed is breeding, not propagating, and the payoff is a plant nobody else has, bought with several years of waiting and a fair chance of a flower worse than the one the seed came from.
What the flower means, from Mesoamerica to the lei stand
Plumeria carries opposite meanings depending on which side of the Pacific the question is asked. Among the Maya the flower was attached to deities of life and fertility, and it became strongly connected with female sexuality; Aztec nobles used it as a mark of elite status and planted the trees in the gardens of the nobility. In the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia the association runs the other way, toward ghosts and death, and the trees are planted around cemeteries, so an American reader and a Filipino reader can picture the same white flower and feel two different things. Hawaii gave plumeria its best known job. The blooms are prized lei flowers and are the traditional choice for home-made leis, and there is a small industry behind that: in 2006 the state's 15 plumeria farms sold more than 12 million flowers for total receipts of $372,000, with annual sales value averaging about $505,000 across a five-year span.
Four beliefs about plumeria that do not hold
Each of these turns up every season on the grower forums, and each one costs somebody a plant or a year of flowers.
The myth: A plumeria that drops every leaf in winter is dying.
The reality: That is dormancy, and it runs from one to five months depending on conditions. The plant is not idle while it lasts, since leafless stems stay green and go on photosynthesizing, so a stored plumeria asks for nothing but a dry, dark corner until the tips swell.
The myth: Cutting off the growing tip forces a plumeria to flower.
The reality: Clusters form at branch tips, so cutting a tip removes the flowers it would have carried, and heavy pruning gives up the following spring's bloom.
The myth: Epsom salt makes a stubborn plumeria flower.
The reality: The feeding ratio for plumeria is 10-30-10, already weighted toward phosphorus, and no magnesium supplement is attached to it.
The myth: Plumeria is an evergreen.
The reality: Plumeria rubra types are deciduous, while Plumeria obtusa and the other white-flowered species are evergreen. The bare-stick winter belongs to the rubra side of the genus.
What to expect in the first years
Plumeria runs on a slow clock, and the first two seasons look like failure to anyone expecting a flowering plant.
Year one goes into roots and leaves. A stem that arrives bare in spring will carry a rosette of leaves by midsummer and stand bare again after the first cool nights. Flowers are possible even in that first year, depending on how large the cutting was and what time of year it was taken, though most first-year plants put everything into stem and foliage. The ones that struggle are rooted late in the season and go into their first winter with almost nothing below the soil, and they spend the next spring building what they missed.
Years two and three are when a cutting-grown plant usually starts flowering and when the branching that carries future clusters gets built. A plant grown from seed is on a slower clock and needs three years or more before it flowers at all. Expect a larger pot each spring, expect the first clusters on the oldest and thickest wood, and expect the flowering to be light before it is heavy: a few clusters the first season, more the next, on a plant that is finally wide enough to carry them.
A mature plumeria settles into an annual cycle of bare winter, spring leaves, warm-season flowers, and bare again. In the ground with steady feeding and water it can reach 10 to 12 feet in 6 years, and from there the questions change from whether it will flower to where the shade falls and how to hold it in bounds. In a pot the same plant stays a fraction of that size, and the yearly work is winter storage, a spring wake-up, and one pruning decision that trades size against the next spring's bloom.
Picked flowers, leis, and how long they hold
Plumeria is handled as a picked flower: blossoms come off the tree one at a time and go straight into a lei, a bowl of water, or a cool bag until they are needed.
Flower photos
FAQ
Why does my plumeria have leaves but no flowers?
Age and sun account for most cases. A plant from a cutting can flower in its first year, but only if the cutting was large and taken at the right time of year, and a young plant in weak light will make foliage and nothing else. Move it to the sunniest hard surface you have and give it a full season there.
How cold can a plumeria tolerate?
A well established plant takes a brief 32 degrees Fahrenheit with cosmetic burn on the tips, while young plants do not survive the same night. Stored dormant plants are kept above 40 degrees, and below 30 degrees a heat source in the storage space is called for.
How long does a plumeria cutting take to root?
Six to eight weeks under good conditions, and many months where the climate is cool. Roots form best in soil between 65 and 85 degrees Fahrenheit, so bottom heat is what shortens the wait.
How long should a cutting sit before I plant it?
At least two weeks of curing in a dry place, which lets the cut seal before it meets soil. Longer than that works against you, since plumeria cuttings do not store well and are best rooted soon after they are taken.
How far back can I cut a plumeria?
Very far. Old trees respond well to pollarding, cut back repeatedly to the same framework. The cost is the calendar: pruning is easiest after leaf drop, but heavy pruning gives up the following spring's bloom.
How do I get rid of plumeria rust?
Sanitation, repeated every year. Pick up fallen leaves and destroy them, and take off severely infected leaves early in the season. Clearing dead leaves from the site in fall reduces what carries into the next year.
Is plumeria poisonous to dogs and cats?
It sits low on the list of dangerous garden plants. The sap causes skin irritation, plumeria is not considered particularly poisonous next to other landscape plants, and there are no recorded cases of death from exposure or ingestion.
Are plumerias better in pots or in the ground?
In the ground only where frost is not a standing threat: interior central Florida sits in zone 9B, where tropical plants are threatened continually, and planting out is generally held to south Florida and protected pockets of the center of the state. Everywhere colder, the pot is the plant.
Will my plumeria come back after dropping all its leaves?
Yes. A leafless plumeria in winter is dormant, and dormancy runs one to five months depending on conditions. Keep it dry and dark, and wait for the branch tips to swell before watering again.
What fertilizer makes a plumeria bloom?
Feed it 10-30-10, every three to four months, at about a pound for every inch of trunk diameter. Scale that down hard for a container, since the rate is written for a trunk growing in open ground.
Which plumeria keeps its leaves through winter?
Plumeria obtusa, sold as Singapore plumeria, is semi-deciduous and holds leaves and flowers through the winter, and its hybrids tend to keep foliage year round.
Interesting tips
- A register of named plumerias exists, and it is long: the Plumeria Society of America listed 368 registered cultivars in its 2009 count, so two plants sold as nothing more specific than pink can look nothing alike on a bench.
- In modern Polynesian custom the flower carries a message as well as a scent, since which ear a woman wears it over signals her relationship status.
- Plumeria seed does not keep. Dry seed holds in a plastic bag for about three months before viability starts to drop, and what is still good germinates in about two weeks.
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